Osterley Campus to Twickenham Campus

Osterley campus to B50 Twickenham campus 7

Start Osterley campus — TW7 5DS

Finish Twickenham campus, at Railshead Road — TW7 7BP

Distance 2.81km

Duration 35 minutes

Ascent 14.8m

Access Osterley station (Piccadilly Line) 1.3km distant from start of section. Buses at end of section. Isleworth station (South West Trains) en route. Buses at London Road en route.

Facilities Basic kiosk at Osterley station. Shops and cafés on London Road en route. Pub on Linkﬁ eld Road en route. All facilities in Old Isleworth en route.

7.1 Osterley campus, at war memorial 0m

7.2 S on College Road’ L on London Road; R on Linkﬁ eld Road; R on Twickenham 1340m Road to Mill Plat.

7.3 L on Mill Plat; follow path to Church Street; L to crane; R on riverside to Town 1410m Wharf; R to Swan Street; L on Church Street; L on South Street; R on Richmond Road; cross River Crane; L on Railshead Road to riverside.

© 2016-20 IG Liddell Brunel50 Path 7 – 1 Lancaster House, This section starts at the Borough Road College war Osterley campus memorial at the junction of Borough Road and College 7.1 Road, at Osterley campus.

The building we know as Lancaster House was built in 1867 to house the London International School, a progressive and internationalist institution whose philosophy came from Richard Cobden (bett er known for his Anti-Corn-Law League activism). Cobden died shortly before the completion of the building and the beginnings of the school. In its ﬁ rst year, the school has 68 pupils; all but ten were boarders. The school roll never rose above 100, and closed in 1889.

The property was sold to Borough Road College, which had been established in 1798 in the road of that name in Southwark, but whose original premises were no longer suitable for the college’s work. At the time of the move, the college was set in the midst of farmland: the surrounding houses came much later. Therefore, the street here was named after the college, not the other way round! Aerial photography from the early 1930s show ﬁ elds to the west and east, with much of the housing on either side of the Great West Road still to be constructed.

In 1976, the college amalgamated with Maria Grey Teacher Training College (on the Twickenham campus) and Chiswick Polytechnic (behind Turnham Green station, in the brick building now housing the Arts Educational School): the merged institution became the West London

7 – 2 Brunel50 Path © 2016-20 IG Liddell Institute of Higher Education. In 1995, the Institute amalgamated with Brunel University, for two years, holding (with Twickenham campus) the transitional title of Brunel University College. The Borough Road site then became known as Brunel University’s Osterley campus. By 2006, all staff and student activity had transferred to Uxbridge as part of the University’s concentration on that site, and the Osterley site was sold for housing. All the college buildings which fi lled the space on the west side of Lancaster House have now been demolished to make way for new housing, while the main Victorian buildings have been retained and turned into fl ats. The former college’s extensive sports facilities remain, now in private ownership.

In front of Lancaster House, at the junction of College Road and Borough Road, stands the Borough Road College War Memorial, topped by a Celtic cross.

Osterley station is 1.3km distant from the start of the section. From the station, cross the A4 by the underpass and, on the south side of the road, walk away from the bridge in an easterly direction on the right-hand pavement. Turn right onto Thornbury Road, then left into Church Road. At the end of Church Road, turn right into Ridgeway Road, and left into Borough Road to reach the war memorial.

From the Borough Road College War Memorial, walk downhill away from Lancaster House on College Road, 7.2 past some 1930s houses which display features of the Arts-and-Crafts movement of William Morris (similar sensibilities are also seen in the architecture of the Red Lion Inn, which the Brunel50 Path passes a litt le way ahead). Half-way down the hill, Ridgeway Road merges from the right, and you will soon reach London Road at the foot of the hill: opposite is Isleworth railway station. Cross the busy thoroughfare at the pedestrian crossing.

On London Road to your right, there are shops and opportunities for a bite to eat: this litt le commercial hub extends down St John’s Road on the far side of the railway bridge.

If you fi nd that you have strayed into that part of St John’s Road, you may retrieve the main route on Linkfi eld Road by walking along Loring Road, or alternatively by continuing beyond St John’s Park to gain Linkfi eld Road via Kendall Road.

From St John’s Road (facing London Road), either the H37 or the 117 bus will take you to the bus station in Hounslow, where you may change onto a 222 bus to Uxbridge. Other bus connections operate to Richmond and Brentford from the vicinity. Trains run from Isleworth station to Waterloo (from the platform nearer the entrance on London Road).

Turn left on London Road, pass under the railway bridge, and turn right into Linkﬁ eld Road at the Bridge Inn. Keeping to the right-hand pavement, cross over Loring Road, and walk the full length of Linkﬁ eld Road.

You will ﬁ nd the Red Lion Inn (with, as noted above, its features so typical of the Arts and Crafts movement) about half-way down on your left, set amongst the mix of terraced houses and cott ages which now

© 2016-20 IG Liddell Brunel50 Path 7 – 3 ﬁ ll the street. This is a notable survivor of the recent wave of pub closures, which seem to have hit particularly hard the ones which, like this one, are isolated from other commercial concerns but which are ﬁ rmly rooted in residential neighbourhoods.

At the bott om of Linkﬁ eld Road, you will come out onto Twickenham Road. Cross at the refuge, and turn right, then left into Mill Plat.

This very tranquil narrow lane soon 7.3 becomes a tarmac footpath, with modern housing beyond the fence on the left. Go round a double=corner zig-zag to reach some modest almshouse dwellings on the right. A litt le Red Lion Inn, Isleworth beyond the almshouse building, on the left, you will see the bricked-up ex-doorway of Warkworth House, and at the bott om of the lane, you reach Church Street. Ingram almshouses

7 – 4 Brunel50 Path © 2016-20 IG Liddell This quiet lane has so much to oﬀ er. The almshouse was established in 1664 by Sir Thomas Ingram, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: the residence backs onto the Duke of Northumberland’s River.

This river was dug by hand (there is a clue is in the placing of the word ‘River’ at the end of the name, rather than at the beginning, as is normal usage for natural rivers such as the Thames, Clyde or Pinn) to boost the waterﬂ ow to mills such as the one here: you can see the spillway at the Church Road bridge. The river also provided water to the ornamental lakes in Syon Park, the nearby estate of the Duke of Northumberland. The local ducal presence also explains the Northumbrian name of “Warkworth House”.

Turn right on Church Street, crossing the river by the bridge; immediately turn left at a sign proclaiming that you are now walking the Thames Path, the National Trail which follows the river from source to sea (you are now following it upstream).

Follow the Duke of Northumberland’s River to its outﬂ ow into the Thames: a grey metal crane has been retained as a reminder of the Town Wharf’s ﬁ rst purpose, the transhipment of goods between river and land transport. Turn right to follow the Thames Path along the wharf. The route passes through the property of the Town Wharf pub, separating the indoors area from the riverside garden (pausing is not obligatory, but nor is it unrecommended) to the far end of the pub terrace.

The wharf is not on the main Thames channel, which ﬂ ows on the far side of Isleworth Ait (the tree-clad island directly opposite the wharf — ‘ait’ is an old word for a riverine island, which is used for many on the Thames: a variant spelling is ‘eyot’, used for such islands as Chiswick Eyot), and bordering the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

This backwater has silted up somewhat as trade has declined, and at low tide the water is only a few centimetres deep and a couple of metres wide: it is therefore popular with mudlarks — or at least, with modern successors of mudlarks with metal-detectors, trying to ﬁ nd a pot of gold (or a coin or two). The London Apprentice, Old Isleworth Looking downstream (that is, to your left) from the crane, you will see the red brick of the London Apprentice pub, which was for a long time popular with staﬀ and students from Twickenham campus as a retreat and watering-hole.

Beyond the pub (and across the road) is the isolated tower of All Saints’ church; the rest of the building was destroyed in 1940. It was not, however razed to the ground, as so many other London buildings were at that time, by aerial enemy action during the Blitz . The destruction

At the point of writing, there is no public riverside access at present (although, with each individual riverside redevelopment, there tends to be a municipal aspiration to have such access as a condition of the granting of planning permission). For that reason, the Brunel50 Path, along with its national routefellow, the Thames Path, must turn away from the river for a road-bound walkaround.

Looking upstream from the Just beyond the Town Wharf Inn, then, turn right to reach Swan Street. Town Wharf pub terrace At the end of this street, turn left into Church Street, to come out onto at high tide South Street in the centre of Old Isleworth.

You will ﬁ nd a fair number of shops and a variety of opportunities for sit-down food and drink just a few metres away up South Street, if for some reason you have not partaken at the Town Wharf pub.

Turn left, then right with the main road, which you should follow to the River Crane.

The wall on your left formed, until recently, the boundary of a convent. The property is being redeveloped for housing on quite an extensive scale. It is expected that this will have signiﬁ cant impact on the locality, and there may need to be minor changes made by walkers of the Brunel50 Path during construction works, and indeed, after the completion of the new development.

At the crossing of the River Crane, you pass into the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames. You are now in the only London Borough which lies on both sides of the Thames (though the City of London does have a toehold on the south side where it has sole jurisdiction over some bridges).

Beyond the Crane bridge, bear next left into Railshead Road, following the Thames Path signs.

The wall on your right used to enclose the estate of Gordon House, the centrepiece of the former Twickenham campus of the University: nowadays, it hems in the new development of housing which was built upon the campus land.

At the end of Railshead Road, make your way out onto the riverside path and turn right.

The dark gothic brick roofscape of Gordon House, with its suggestion of Transylvanian bats just waiting to swoop down upon you, looms up somewhat forbiddingly above your head on your right — though the

You are now at Twickenham campus, the end of this section.

Public transport between here and Uxbridge is rather contrived: however, the H37 bus will take you as far as Hounslow bus station for the 222 bus to Uxbridge. The bus station lies a short distance from Hounslow East Underground station, where the Tube will take you either to Heathrow for the A10 bus to The Greenway, or via Acton Town for another Tube train to Uxbridge (and a connection to the campus).

However, it must be said that Richmond is a much bett er proposition as a staging-post for the walker on the Brunel50 Path route — not only does the town centre host all the standard urban facilities from banks to department stores, cafés to pharmacies, but Richmond station is a major terminus on the Underground, with single-change links available (via Hammersmith) to Uxbridge.

The town centre and the station lie a short distance from the White Cross Inn on the riverside, ahead on the next stage of the Brunel50 Path.